Most handheld paint brushes are sold with cardboard brush covers intended to maintain the shape of the brush head between uses, and in particular while the brush is drying after being cleaned. The cardboard, however, prevents the brush head from drying completely, and falls apart after a few uses. Plastic covers are also known, and while more durable, result in even slower drying times.
It is important to dry brush heads completely, since it is difficult to paint well with a wet brush head. Quality brush heads are also expensive, and so a painter may only have a limited number of brushes available to paint with, to wash, and to dry out again for use the next day. These factors make drying time even more important.
It is also preferred to store brush heads bristles-down when they are drying. However, standing them on their bristle ends can deform their shape, and it is often impractical to find convenient places to hang them for drying.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,199,694 to Van Diest et al. discloses a brush head cover with front and rear sheath halves with a bristle-holding portion having an expansible bottom opening for receiving a paint brush in a handle-first orientation, and a ferrule-holding portion with an expansible top opening for allowing the handle to extend from the covered bristles. Between the ferrule-holding portion and the bottom opening, the sheath halves are un-joined and are resiliently separable from each other to allow the bottom opening to expand to receive the paint brush. The brush is pulled out of the sheath through the top opening by grasping and pulling the brush handle. The part of the sheath where the halves are joined forms the ferrule-holding portion, and the part of the sheath where the halves are separable forms the bristle-holding portion. The ferrule-holding portion includes interior ridges to engage the parallel raised ridges formed on the typical paint brush ferrule, in order to secure the paint brush in the sheath. The top opening has flaps that act as retaining members that tend to keep the brush in place regardless of the orientation of the sheath.
The molding and tolerances required for the Van Diest '694 plastic cover would appear to make manufacturing relatively difficult and expensive. The living hinge and the alignment of the separable halves appear to be prone to fatigue and misalignment over time. Insertion of the brush handle-first through the bottom opening and past the relatively stiff bottom edges is believed to be more difficult than implied. The bottom opening also appears to remain open after the brush is inserted, which unless the rigid cover is properly matched to the brush, exposes the bristle ends to deformation. Finally, despite the lower open end and a plurality of ventilation holes formed in the faces of the plastic sheath halves, drying time is believed to be relatively slow.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,675,966 to Ray discloses a paintbrush cover or “shuck” made from panels: a back panel, a bottom panel, a front panel, a pair of side panels, and a pair of front flaps, defining a chamber having an open top with a fastener. The major panels have screen mesh to facilitate the drying of the brush. A top flap with a snap fastener selectively closes the open top of the chamber and a front portion. The panels are joined by fold lines, and it appears that the cover is folded around the brush head after the brush handle is inserted through an opening (“throughbore”) in the top flap, a procedure that appears to be somewhat cumbersome for the painter, especially with a wet brush.
None of the foregoing brush covers is sufficiently practical, neat, cost-effective, easy to use, protective, and quick-drying to be useful for serious painters who use a significant number of good brushes.